RU2478555C2 - Sheet material processing device - Google Patents

Abstract

FIELD: process engineering.

SUBSTANCE: invention relates to sheet material processing. Device for continuous sheet-by-sheet separation of unclamped sheet material comprises feeder, sheet separator and transfer system. Feeder consists of first feeding device and second feeding device. Pile of sheet material is placed in container. Said container has fixed bottom. Said bottom is jointed with feeder conveyor. Said bottom and said conveyor make said first feeding element. Reliability of sheet material is increased.

EFFECT: faster processing.

8 cl, 6 dwg

Description

The present invention relates to a device for the continuous piecewise separation of loose sheet material, especially banknotes, coupons, receipts, dividing cards and other sheet material, from piles.

When processing banknotes on machines for their processing, great importance is attached to the preparation of banknotes submitted for processing. Often, banknotes are relatively disordered, which makes it impossible to easily place them in the loading tray of the unit for separating banknotes from the stack, which is part of the banknote processing machine used and is also called a sheet separator. Typically, disordered banknotes are stacked by the operator in a stack, which can then be placed in the loading tray of the sheet separator to enable them to individually capture banknotes. Subsequently, individual banknotes are processed in a machine for processing them. In the process of such processing, various properties of banknotes are determined by sensors, for example, their type, i.e. face value and currency, their authenticity, their condition, i.e. the presence of contaminants, damage, etc., their suitability for further circulation, their position and orientation, and other parameters. Depending on the identified properties of the banknotes, their subsequent processing is performed, for example, they are sorted according to certain receiving trays or in the presence of too significant damage or contamination and therefore, due to unsuitability for further circulation, they are sent for destruction to the shredder.

If it is necessary to separate different groups of banknotes, for example banknotes from different payers, so-called dividing cards are placed between banknotes from different payers. Such dividing cards can be recognized by sensors of the banknote processing machine used to separate banknotes received from different payments from each other. In addition, dividing cards can contain various information, which can also be recognized by sensors and which refers to different payers, which allows you to correlate different payments with a specific payer.

However, the preparation of banknotes and, if necessary, separation cards is often costly and time-consuming, which is why preparing banknotes immediately before placing them in the loading tray of the sheet separator of the banknote processing machine used is always problematic when processing banknotes in the corresponding machine used happening at high speed. It is precisely in such cases that downtime occurs for the processing of banknotes, because due to the lack of time for preparing banknotes, the operator manages to place banknotes in the loading tray of the sheet separator only in insufficient quantities.

For this reason, when preparing banknotes for processing, they, if necessary, together with dividing cards, are often first placed in boxes. Such boxes are then transported to a banknote processing machine. After this, the operator only needs to remove the banknotes, if necessary, together with the separation cards, from the next box and place a stack of banknotes and separation cards, if any, in the loading tray of the sheet separator.

The described approach should be regarded as ineffective, since banknotes and, if necessary, separation cards for their preparation for processing must first be put in boxes with the involvement of one or more operators for this operation. After that, when performing the next work step, the operator must again remove from the next drawer previously stacked banknotes in it and, if necessary, separation cards and place them in the loading tray of the sheet separator of the banknote processing machine.

From DE 19512505 A1, a device is known for piecewise separating sheet material from a stack, in the form of which sheet material to be separated from it is placed in a loading tray, which consists of upper and lower parts. The use of two made in the form of combs and vertically and horizontally moving in the loading tray allows continuous piecewise separation of the sheet material from the stack, since the next sheet material can be placed in the loading tray at a time when the previously placed sheet material was not yet completely separately separated from the stack. To do this, these tools alternately enter the loading tray and alternately move the sheet material to the position of its piece-wise separation from the stack. In addition to this, the upper and lower parts of the loading tray are proposed to be made in the form of separate parts, which makes it possible to use a variety of lower parts in which it is possible to put sheet material individually separated from the stack. For single-piece separation from the stack, the sheet material is laid on the bottom of one of the lower parts, which can be transported by the transport system to the sheet separator. In a sheet separator, the lower parts are combined with the upper part, after which piece-wise separation of the sheet material from the stack may occur.

However, the device described above and the method of piece-by-piece separation of sheet material from the stack by him should be considered as having the disadvantage that the loading tray is divided into upper and lower parts. Such a separation of the loading tray into the upper and lower parts necessitates the use of the lower part of a complex structure with a fixed bottom, as well as the use of the two vertically and horizontally moving means that are functionally connected with the upper part of the loading tray to enable continuous piecewise separation of the sheet material from the stack. In addition, the lower parts must be made in the form of open carriers for piece-wise detachable sheet material from the stack. Such lower parts do not have a sufficiently high reliability in handling them, since the sheet material placed in the open lower parts may fall out of them when not handling them very carefully and transporting them.

From WO 2005/003005 A1, a less complex device for processing sheet material is known when it is individually piece separated from the stack. Such a device also provides two means for supplying sheet material to the position of its piece-wise separation from the stack. During the operation of such feeding means, the first feeding means in its loading position receives the first stack of piecewise unfastened sheet material from it and moves it by uniaxial movement to a position in which the top sheet of the stack can be caught by the sheet separator. At the same time, as the thickness of the stack decreases, the first feeding means continues to continuously feed it to the sheet separator, by which it can grab the corresponding top sheet of the stack and separate from it. At the same time, the second feed means, capable of performing only uniaxial movement, is in the loading position and in the process of piecewise separation of sheet material from the first stack takes the next - second - stack, also fed to the piecewise separation of sheet material from it, and moves it from the loading position to a position in which the top sheet of the second stack is directly below the first feeding means. After that, the second stack brought to it from below is combined with the first stack, from which the sheet material continues to be separated piece by piece, for which the first feeding means located between the two stacks is removed from the supply path of the stacks. Then, the first supply means is moved along a loop-shaped path into the place of the second supply means on the path of supplying the stacks and thereby receives the combined stack from it. After this, the second feeding means can, by repeated uniaxial movement along the path of moving the stacks, return to the loading position to receive the next stack fed to the piece of sheet material from it.

The advantage of such a device is a much simpler design of the means used in it for feeding sheet material to the sheet separator. In addition, you can opt out of using a fixed receiving tray. However, in such a device, unfastened sheet material can be fed into its feeding mechanism only in the form of stacks. For this reason, the preparation of sheet material in large volumes for piecewise separation from the stack is not possible without involving one or more operators to perform multiple manual operations with sheet material. In addition, only stacks of small thickness are permissible to be placed in the feed mechanism. The use of boxes for preparing sheet material for processing is also of little use, since banknotes placed in boxes for their subsequent processing, i.e. for their single-piece separation from the stack, they must again be manually removed by the operator from the boxes and placed in the loading tray of the sheet separator for them to be able to feed sheet material by the feeding mechanism to the position of piece-by-piece separation of sheet material from the stack.

Based on the prior art described above, the present invention was based on the task of developing a device for the continuous piecewise separation of loose sheet material, especially banknotes, commodity coupons, receipts, dividing cards and other sheet material, from stacks that would simplify and improve reliability processing sheet material at a lower cost for this time and money.

This problem is solved using the distinctive features presented in claim 1 of the claims. Various embodiments of the invention are given in the dependent claims.

According to the invention, in the device according to the invention for the continuous piecewise separation of loose sheet material from the stacks, having a sheet separator for piecewise separation of the loose sheet material from the stacks and a feeding device by which the stack of the loose sheet material fed to the piece separation from it is moved to the position in which the sheet material the piles are captured by the sheet separator and transferred to the transport system, and which consists of the first m uniaxial movement of the feeding element and the second feeding element, which performs mainly multiaxial movement, a container is provided in which a stack of loose sheet material is placed and which has a movable bottom on which a stack of sheet material is located and is placed in a receiver of a device having a conveyor for it, which is connected to the bottom of the container located in the receiver, the bottom of which, together with the conveyor, forms the first feed element.

An advantage of the solution proposed in the invention is that the use of containers enables continuous piecewise separation of loose sheet material from stacks even in extremely large volumes. In this case, the sheet material is distributed over several containers, which are sequentially placed in the receiver intended for them and located in which the sheet material is individually separated from the stacks. Due to the connection of the bottom of the container in the receiver with the conveyor, when the container is placed in the receiver, without any complication of the structure, the first feeding element of the device according to the invention is formed, which together with the second feeding element enables continuous piecewise separation of the sheet material contained in several containers from the stack. Due to this, banknotes can be loaded into the device according to the invention with relatively large stacks, even in large quantities, and continuously individually separated from the stacks. In addition, loose bonds should be manually processed by the operator only once when they are placed in one of the containers, which greatly simplifies the processing of banknotes.

In one of the preferred embodiments of the invention, the device according to the invention has one or more workstations intended for filling containers with non-bonded sheet material on them and connected by a container transport system by which filled containers move from workstations to at least one receiver of at least one devices, and empty containers move from the receiver back to workstations.

An advantage of this embodiment of the invention is the possibility of preparing a large number of containers, the processing of the sheet material in which can then be carried out almost completely in an automated mode.

Other embodiments of the invention and its advantages are discussed in more detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings, which show:

in Fig.1-5 - made according to one of the variants proposed in the invention, a device for continuous piecewise separation of sheet material from the stack at various points in time of its processing and

figure 6 - proposed in the invention a device for continuous piecewise separation of sheet material from the stack with additional equipment for more efficient preparation of sheet material for processing by piece-wise separation from the stack.

Figure 1 shows made according to one of the variants proposed in the invention, a device for continuous piecewise separation of sheet material from the stack when it is processed, for example, in a banknote processing machine. During such processing, the stacked non-bonded sheet material BN is captured by the sheet separator 10 and transferred to a conveyance system not shown, by which a separate sheet material is moved in the direction of arrow T for further processing. The BN sheet material in a stack may be documents such as banknotes, commodity coupons, checks, ID cards and other sheet material.

At the moment shown in FIG. 1, a container 20, especially a cassette, for banknotes is placed in the corresponding receiver 16. Such an operation can be performed, as shown in the drawing, by the operator 30 or by a corresponding mechanism, for example, a robot. To this end, the operator 30 grabs the cassette 20 by the handle 23 which it has. After placing the cassette 20 in the receiver 16, it is possible to move the handle 23 to a different position and remove the cover not shown in the drawing, which is not shown in the drawing, from above from the top, for example, by turning it towards to the operator. The cassette 20 has a housing 24 covering the banknotes 24, which in the following drawings is shown only partially to enable a more visual explanation of the principle of operation of the device proposed in the invention. For the same reason, the drawings are not partially shown guide elements 17, which are designed to guide forming a stack of banknotes BN after they are pulled out of the cartridge 20 to a position above the upper edge of the housing 24 of the cartridge 20.

When placing the cartridge 20 in the receiver 16, the bottom 21 located in it is kinematically connected to the conveyor 11-14 with the formation of the first feed element. By means of an engine 11, a drive 12 and a guide 13, a kinematically connected connecting element 14 moves the bottom 21 in such a way that the banknote stack BN located in the cassette 20 moves in the direction of the leaf separator 10 until the first (upper) banknote of the banknote stack BN can be captured by the sheet separator 10 and transferred to the transport system T. After that, the bottom 21, respectively, the first feed element continues to continuously move further by the conveyor 11-14 for the possibility of sequential capture b BN annotations from the stack and their single-piece separation from it by the sheet separator 10.

When bottom 21 reaches its upper end point, i.e. position at the upper edge of the cartridge 20, respectively, of its body 24, the stack of banknotes BN is picked up by the second feed element 15 and continues to move in the direction of the leaf separator 10.

As shown in FIG. 2, after receiving the stack of banknotes BN as the second feeding member 15, the bottom 21 of the cartridge 20 is lowered by the conveyor 11-14, after which the cartridge 20 can be removed from the receiver 16. The cartridge 20 can also be removed from the receiver without lowering the bottom 21, and in this case, only the connecting element 14 of the conveyor 11-14 is then lowered so that the next cassette can be placed in the receiver 16.

As shown further in FIG. 2, the bottom 21 of the cassette has slots 22, into which a second feed element 15 made in the form of a comb can be inserted so that it can receive a stack of banknotes BN from the bottom 21 forming the first feed element.

In the process of removing the cartridge 20, the stack of banknotes BN continues to move further by the second feed member 15 in the direction of the sheet separator to allow them to continuously separate pieces of banknotes BN from their stack. The continued piecewise separation of banknotes from their stack can be judged by the decreasing stack of banknotes BN shown in FIG. 3 at the moment in which the next cassette 20 'is placed in the receiver 16. The figure further shows that the guide elements 17 also have slots, the presence of which allows the second feed element 15 to move the banknotes BN.

As shown in FIG. 4, the bottom 21 ′ of the next cassette 20 ′ is moved by the conveyor 11-14 in the direction of the leaf separator 10 until the upper banknote of the banknote stack BN ′ is in contact with the second feed member 15.

Then, as shown in FIG. 5, the second feed member 15 is removed, and the first stack of banknotes BN and the next stack of banknotes BN ′ are combined into one stack. After that, such a single stack of banknotes BN and BN 'is then moved by the first feeding element formed by the conveyor 11-14 and the bottom 21' of the next container 20 ', in the direction of the sheet separator 10, which can continue the continuous piecewise separation of banknotes from the stack. This process continues until the bottom 21 'reaches the level of the upper edge of the next cassette 20', after which the second feed element 15 takes over the function of moving the banknotes. Thus, the whole process described above, starting from Fig. 2, generally will be repeated until the following cassettes 20 'are placed in the receiver. In the same case, when the next cassette 20 'is not placed in the receiver, all available banknotes BN' from the last cassette 20 'placed in the receiver will continue to be individually separated from their stack, for which they will be moved by the second feeding element 15 in the direction of the paper separator 10. After capturing the last banknote, the second feed member 15 is removed.

During the above-described process of separating pieces of banknotes BN, respectively BN 'from the stack and moving them consisting of the feeding elements 15, 21, 21', respectively 21 'of the feeding device, the first feeding element is formed by the bottom 21 of the cartridge 20, respectively the bottom 21' of the cartridge 20 ' only uniaxial movement, primarily vertical movement towards and away from the sheet separator 10. The second feeding element 15 moves along a loop-like path and, when moving to the leaf separator 10, protrudes into the area formed by the guide elements 17 above the cassette 20, 20 ', respectively, and below the leaf separator 10, and is removed from this zone when it moves from the leaf separator 10. In this case, the second feeding element 15 performs a multiaxial movement, first of all, a biaxial movement, mainly a vertical movement in the direction to and from the sheet separator 10, as well as a horizontal movement in the direction of the area formed by the guide elements 17 above the cassette 20, 20 'and below the sheet separator 10 and from her.

Along with the above-described embodiment of the device for the continuous separation of the loose sheet material from the stack, other embodiments of such a device are possible.

In this case, first of all, a different arrangement of the second feeding element 15 is possible, in which, for example, it is fed to the banknotes and supports them not from the long side of the cartridge 20, but from its short side. Likewise, the upper edge of the cassette 20 does not have to be a limiter for movement of the bottom 21. The upper one means the edge, upon reaching which the bottom 21 of the cassette 20, when moving upward under the stack of banknotes BN, you can bring the second feeding element 15 to take over the function of its further supply to the sheet separator 10. For this, first of all, you can provide slots in the case 24 of the cassette, providing the possibility of supplying a second feeding element 15 under the stack of banknotes.

Figure 6 shows the device according to the invention for continuous piecewise separation of sheet material from the stack with additional equipment for more efficient preparation of sheet material for processing by piece-wise separation from the stack.

At one or more workstations 40 for preparing the processed sheet material, operators 30 can place the processed sheet material, especially banknotes, commodity coupons, checks, dividing cards and other sheet material, in containers 20. Containers 20 are fed into the transportation system 50, which banknote-filled containers 20 are transported to one or more banknote processing machines 60. The containers 20 are placed one at a time by the robot 31, which is a component of their transportation system 50, or optionally by the operator in the appropriate receiver 16 of the banknote processing machine 60. After receiving the processed banknotes by the second feeding element 15 in accordance with the procedure described above with reference to FIGS. 1-5, the empty container 20 is removed from the receiver 16. Next, the empty container 20 is again fed into the container transport system 50, after which the robot 31 places the next container 20. into the receiver 16. Empty containers 20 by their transportation system 50 are moved back to the workplace or to workstations 40, where the containers can again be filled with banknotes. If a malfunction occurs in the container transport system 50 or the banknote processing machine 60, a signaling device 70 can notify such malfunctions in order to be able to resolve the malfunctions by the operator.

To further automate the processing of sheet material, containers 20 can be provided with code marks, for example, in the form of machine-readable characters, in particular bar codes, electronic memory devices, in particular RFID tags, etc. When preparing workstations 40, the code marks of containers 20 can be correlated with banknotes in containers, which, for example, were received during payments from certain persons, etc. For this, at workplaces 40 there are corresponding devices for reading, respectively, writing code marks. The same devices for reading, respectively, writing code marks are available on the receiver 16 of the banknote processing machine 60 to be able to take into account the information contained in the code marks of the containers during banknote processing.

Claims (8)

1. A device for the continuous piecewise separation of unfastened sheet material (BN) from the stacks, having a sheet separator (10) for piecewise separation of the loose sheet material from the stacks and a feeding device (15, 21) by which the stack of the piecelessly unfastened sheet material (BN) moves to a position in which the sheet material of the stack is captured by the sheet separator (10) and transferred to the transport system (T), and which consists of the first feeding element, which performs basically uniaxial movement nta (21) and the second feeding element (15), which performs mainly multiaxial movement, characterized in that the stack of loose sheet material (BN) is placed in at least one container (20) having a movable bottom (21), on which a stack of sheet material (BN) is located, and placed in the intended receiver (16) of the device having a conveyor (11-14), which is connected to the bottom (21) of the container (20) located in the receiver (16), the bottom (21) which together with the conveyor (11-14) form the first feed element. 2. The device according to claim 1, in which the bottom (21) forming the first supply element is made with the possibility of its movement by the conveyor (11-14) up to the upper edge of the container (20), in the area of which the upper edge of the container (20) is a stack of loose sheet material (BN) is received by the second feed element (15) from the first feed element (21). 3. The device according to claim 2, in which the conveyor (11-14) after receiving a stack of loose sheet material (BN) by the second feeding element (15) lowers the bottom forming the first feeding element (21). 4. The device according to claim 2, in which, after removing the container (20) from the receiver (16) of the device, the next container (20 ') is placed in this receiver, forming the first feeding element of the bottom (21') of which is moved by the conveyor (11- 14) until the sheet material (BN ') located in this next container (20') is in contact with the second feed element (15), which is then removed from the sheet material location area (BN, BN '). 5. The device according to one of claims 1 to 4, in which the first and second feeding elements (21, 15) are made complementary in shape, with first of all the first feeding element (21) having slots into which the second feeding element (fifteen). 6. The device according to one of claims 1 to 4, in which one or more workstations (40) are connected to the container transportation system (50) for filling containers (20) with non-bonded sheet material, while the container transportation system (50, 31) filled containers (20) are moved from workstations (40) to at least one receiver (16), and empty containers (20) are moved from receiver (16) back to workstations (40). 7. The device according to claim 6, in which the workstations (40) and receivers (16) for containers have reading and / or recording devices that write and / or read information contained in code marks associated with containers (20), before total code marks in the form of bar codes or electronic storage devices. 8. The device according to one of claims 1 to 4, which is a component of a banknote processing machine.

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